Productivity In Pyjamas: Surviving & Thriving While Working From Home

Companies across the board are moving rapidly to keep up with this unexpected shift to digital remote operations, if that’s even within their capability. There’s a lot of anxiety, a lot of uncertainty, and a lot of steep learning curves for many.

At this time, we’re on a mission to be positive — to share positive news, encourage positive conversations, and see the silver lining to every situation.

With that in mind, we want to focus on the positive outcomes of spending a month working from home, and flip the script on negative thinking. We’ll look at how to survive and thrive during the lockdown for you and your staff.

Surviving: adapt to the situation

First off, we’ve got to acknowledge that working from home in this situation is unlike working from home on any normal day. Businesses are suffering, workers are anxious, and every aspect of our lives is affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and containment measures put in place by the government.

This is a different business world to what you’re used to, and requires a different approach.

For many businesses, the first week or two will be spent adapting to the new normal and finding new ways to connect with and support their staff and customers.

The situation for your staff:

Working from home can be challenging for some people, especially those with children or family responsibilities. Space can be tight, tension can be high, and children disruptive to concentration.

How to adapt:

Encourage your staff to get creative in fixing up their workspaces, like this person who made a desk from a laundry hamper, and draw up house rules for conference calling and work hours. Share your new workspaces with each other for inspiration and encourage regular catchups to laugh and vent about your experiences.

The situation for your clients:

In the same boat as you, your clients will be assessing their business processes or preparing for a month of closed doors. It’s a stressful time financially and requires compassion.

How to adapt:

Patience and clear communication is needed to ensure your clients know what you’re capable of helping with (or not) during these next four weeks. You might need to step up the frequency of your communications, speak more clearly, and opt for video or phone calls from time to time instead of email.

Making the effort early on to adapt fully and communicate clearly will improve both your company output and your client relationships, and stand you in good stead for stepping out of lockdown and back into the office in May.

Thriving: flip the script

Once you’re settled in your home office/laundry/garage/kitchen, it’s time to get productive.

These four weeks away from your office and with limited capability could be an ideal time for big picture business thinking.

When you’re in the midst of normal business operations, it’s easy to get swamped by day-to-day detail-oriented tasks, and not have time for the big picture strategising that can really take you forward.

If your workload is reduced during this period, refocus your attention on the growth waiting ahead by planning and laying out the steps to success you will take once the lockdown is over.

This period of lockdown is a great time to reach out to others and ask their advice or support for your big picture thinking — it’s a purposeful method of connection, and a way to reduce the isolation many people will be feeling.

Email an old mentor, message a friend in another industry, connect over LinkedIn — whatever your method, find an excuse to reach out and have a conversation you normally wouldn’t have time for.

We’re all doing this for each other

When you get frustrated with being stuck inside, remind yourself why we’re doing this — we’re staying inside to save lives. One fifth of the world’s population is on lockdown right now, we’re all in this together and we’re doing this for each other.

We’re immensely grateful for the people on the frontline, working in hospitals, medical centers, pharmacies, supermarkets, and delivery services across the country (and across the world). The best thing we can do to support them is to stay home and abide by the isolation guidelines.

BizStory: writing from home

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